


When Wolves are at the Runners, Throw Someone off the Sled

by Xuan_Tian_Shang_Ti



Category: Bleach, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 06:20:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10735914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xuan_Tian_Shang_Ti/pseuds/Xuan_Tian_Shang_Ti
Summary: None of the other schools gets why no one wants to fight Headmaster Ichigo. The Shinou students are more than happy to let them learn why.Inspired by InfinityIllusion's "Five Idiots, Four Professional Problem Solvers, and One Cup to Cause the Chaos"





	When Wolves are at the Runners, Throw Someone off the Sled

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Five Idiots, Four Professional Problem Solvers, and One Cup to Cause the Chaos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9890540) by [InfinityIllusion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfinityIllusion/pseuds/InfinityIllusion). 



> "Please note that for those working with swords, what we teach is not European fencing, but zanjutsu. The rules are different, and all of the Shinou students will be fighting with live weapons. On Sunday, during the closing ceremonies, the top ranked student will spar against me."
> 
> The last statement caused a flurry of whispers to break out among the Shinou students, which caused their Headmaster to smirk, before he returned to addressing the others.
> 
> \--InfinityIllusion

Four Days until Demonstration:

 

“Come on Yamaguchi, you’re the obvious choice. Rank one in the fifth year advance, make a good showing for us, why don’t you?” The words were overheard by a few curious students from Beauxbatons. 

“Yeah, but you’ve got Nagata over there, she’s in the top ten of sixth year. She’ll do so much better than me,” replied the boy in question, obviously decided to throw another student under the bus. 

The girl twisted her head around and scowled at them, “Oh no you don’t. I’m not going to fight him. I’m only rank nine in zanjutsu, if we want to make a really good showing then you want Namoto. He’s been sneaking out to hang out with some of the Eleventh.” She wrapped her arm around a suddenly pale boy, “Surely you want to make a good showing for your friends there, might even get you a seat if you do good.” 

Namoto shook her arm off, “I thought you told me that I shouldn’t get a big head for that, after all I’m still only rank ten in zanjutsu. I agree with Yamaguchi, you’d make a far better sac- demonstration.” 

\--- 

Slightly further away, some of the Durmstrang students heard another discussion. 

“He’s a speed-power fighter mainly, so we’d want to give either a really good balanced fighter or a technique-speed in there. Remember what sensei said about a fight with advantages like that starts out won?” 

“Yes, but he was talking about when you were fighting someone on your level. For someone like him you’d need to beat it in a single blow, or never get hit. So a pure speed or power would be better. Technique would just get overwhelmed.”

“Oh and it just so turns out that you can’t try because you’re mainly a technique fighter is it?”

“And you’re a power fighter, convenient for me.” 

The exchange left the Scandinavian wizards confused, why wouldn’t they want to test themselves against their headmaster? Tactical thinking was all very well and good, but practicing against a superior opponent was also a good thing, right? 

\--- 

“I think you should give it a go kouhai, it’ll be good for you.” A young girl told the man sitting next to him. He looked startled before glancing down at her. 

“It might very well be, but I remember a valuable lesson that you taught me senpai. That physical appearance is meaningless in a fight, and one should not judge on age but should test everyone to see where they stand. So surely you should be the one to fight, to teach everyone else the same lesson.” 

The younger girl pouted, and the Hogwarts students listening in were shocked at the way the older student ( _Kouhai?_ ) was willing to sacrifice the younger girl ( _Senpai?_ ) to get out of a fight. It wasn’t until later when they were telling a housemate about the experience, that they learnt that Senpai and Kouhai actually meant Senior and Junior and weren’t names. 

\--- 

Ichigo smirked again as he finished his explanation to the other houses. At the cessation of his speech a few of his precious little students looked ready to make a shunpo assisted escape to one of the other cultural demonstrations. He quirked an eyebrow at Chad, who had made his way to the door as the whispered discussions had been carried out, and let his smirk grow a some as the click of the lock drew the attention of all his battle trained munchkins (ignoring the fact that all of them were older than him. He was the headmaster and so they were his) and sprang the last part of his trap. 

“In order to make the best showing possible, all of the Shinou students here will be partaking in our little demonstration in order to make it so you have the best possible grounding in zanjutsu as is possible.” Oh how he relished the groans and whimpers that accompanied that statement. This was going to be such a fun week, he’d been getting bored sitting around with all the other headmasters. 

 

Three Days until Demonstration:

 

All rumour mills everywhere are known to spread information quickly. However student rumour mills are above and beyond the best of them at that regard. It was only breakfast of the next day, but somehow everyone already knew that none of the Shinou students were eager to have a spar with their headmaster.

They found it rather odd and funny. Then an inside source in Shinou reported that a student called Yamaguchi had managed to get his legs tangled up in his bed sheets and tripped when getting out of bed, knocking himself out in the process. It was rather unfortunate went the general line of thinking, before someone from Beauxbatons piped up that he was one of the higher ranked students in the Shinou cadre. Then it became hilarious. 

By lunch of that day two more Shinou students had managed to remove themselves from the pool, one through somehow having “the rich English food” disagree with her stomach. The other had been “trying to teach himself Merish and only had the Suzuki’s golden egg at hand”. Apparently Professor Inuoe had managed to get him his hearing and balance back, but Madam Pomfrey had insisted on a few days of bed rest just to be sure of a full recovery. 

The Mysterious Bookies of HogwartsTM had started up an entirely new bet on the most ridiculous way that one of their Japanese guests tried to remove themselves from the pool. Current bets ranged from surprising Moody to accidentally wandering into the Forbidden Forest. However, ever incident that followed was more ridiculous than the last. 

The only sign that things had gotten really bad was after lunch when a new portal opened up on the lawn and disgorged a lady with her black hair braided down her chest, another with short, spikey silver hair and another extremely nondescript man. They had apparently been called in for emergency evacuation of Nagata. There was much confusion and worry, until it was revealed that she had volunteered to eat lunch with Professor Inuoe. The offending lunch had since gone missing, and was rumoured to have ended up in the hands of Professor Snape. 

 

Two Days until Demonstration:

 

Just before the training of the day started news had spread that one of the students had been trying a new type of magic that they thought gave their sword negative damage. All of their fingers were eventually found and reattached, but they were evacuated to Shinou’s medical facilities to get an emergency transfusion. Needless to say, Ichigo was not amused. 

Upon the start of the training, he called over all his munchkins. The details of the talk were never made clear to others, but some enterprising eavesdroppers brought back the news that it involves something called “Yachiru” and “a half tonne of sugar”. All of the more obvious accidents came to an end, leave the Mysterious Bookies of HogwartsTM scrambling to figure out how they should pay their bets. Eventually they decided that there was no bet as crazy as removing all fingers, even after brutal food poisoning. 

Due to this the Shinou students decided to get a little more creative. During that practice there were three separate incidents of students falling flat on their faces. They had apparently managed to hook their toes into the hems of their hakama when they were attacking. A further two took advantage of the fact that they were teaching inexperienced people to use swords, and took blows badly in order to “teach them to respect their swords”, and not least because shoulder injuries meant that they couldn’t lift their swords properly anymore. 

Ichigo was finding this incredibly amusing, they just kept coming up with new ways to remove themselves from the possibility of fighting him. He could honestly say that through the way that they were dodging their responsibilities to do their best, that this crop of students would undoubtedly become some of the best seated officers that the Gotei had seen in a long time. He was waiting with baited breath until Kyouraku had to deal with the various excuses that would be offered. He was going to be dreaming about it, but for now he had to deal with them. 

\--- 

Apparently some Durmstrang students knew how to fight with blades. The poor fools came forward during the first session as knowing the basics, and could they please do some more advance work. They were a gift from the gods as far as the Shinou students were concerned, they were good at fighting and willing to go beyond their limits to prove themselves as the best. If the Japanese hadn’t been intent on getting themselves disqualified from the competition, then they probably would have dropped out in the heats, but by general consensus it was decided that seeing as they wanted to fight so much, then they could go up against the Headmaster. 

 

One Day until Demonstration:

 

The tournament to decide who was highest ranking started at noon. The very first of the bouts set the tone for the battle with two students battling it out hard, sparks flying everywhere. The fight was called when one of the students accidently managed to mauver themselves into the sparks and set their hair alight. The next round was one for the books, with one student managing to slice at the ankle of the other, only for them to jump and the momentum of the swing to take them forward and under the downward bound feet, getting solidly knocked out. 

The third of the bouts ended up with one student getting disarmed, and just as the match was called the sword arced back down and stabbed the unfortunate disarmer in his leg. He went down with a cry of “nailed it” and the other student slumped in despair of their success. The fourth bout was between Hogwarts students and was therefore an honest, if somewhat dull, attempt at actually besting the other in sword fighting, as were the fifth, seventh and ninth rounds. 

The sixth round held one of the saviours, as they were known to the Shinou students, and as such they breezed through with no trouble at all. The eighth round went by similarly well for the other sacrifice. However it was the tenth round of the warm ups that would go down as a moment of history. The students went at each other hacking brutally, defending by mere hairs before one shoved the others sword down and spun around to hack at her spine. His attempt was interrupted when she stabbed him. Through her own shoulder. The sword pinned his forearm to his upper, to the collective groan of sympathy and phantom pains. 

Both students were removed and the battle was declared as a tie. Ichigo would be talking to them later, he suspected that they had probably planned that one as a way to remove one another from play. He also knew that the girl was far more experienced than most people expected. He had to applaud their efforts though, definitely lieutenant level of responsibility there. Rangiku would be proud. 

The fights continued in the same vein, with the Shinou students defeating themselves, until it was a Durmstrang student fighting a Beauxbatons student. The Durmstrang student won quite handily, leaving him suddenly alone to face Ichigo. 

 

Day of the Demonstration:

 

“Well…on the plus side everything’s been reattached and he’s communicating quite well now that we’ve taught him Morse code,” was Inuoe’s chirpy addition to the aftermath of the demonstration fight. 

“Well, I suppose that he did say at you to come at him with all his strength.” Karkaroff allowed, “Do you have any idea when the fool will make a full recovery?” 

“Probably sometime next week, if Professor Inuoe continues to assist,” Madam Pomfrey reported.


End file.
